1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a method for defect diagnosis and management; in particular, to a method of diagnosing and managing defects of an article within a fabrication process.
2. Description of Related Art
The fabrication process for semiconductors, PC circuit boards, masks, flat panel displays, or solar cells includes film deposition, masking, photo lithography, etching, etc. During the fabrication process, the generated defects may be random defects or systematic defects. Those defects come from different sources, ex. equipment malfunction, facility leak, impurities of environment, design layout weak spot or the like.
Some defects will result in yield reduction of the fabrication process, and these defects are so-called “killing defects”. Killing defects will cause the semiconductor, or PC circuit board, etc. to have an open failure if, for example, the defect affects a conductive line of the semiconductor, or to have a short failure if the defect affects the space between conductive lines. Killing defects will eventually generate bad dies in the semiconductor, bad single boards in PC circuit board, etc. When killing defects are occurring frequently, yield will be reduced, and costs of the fabrication process will increase. Therefore, it is important to manage defects in real-time when they occur, and further diagnose impacts to the equipment of the process, or identify the weak design spot.
To deal with defects, a defect scan and inspection tool is commonly used to monitor defects during the fabrication process. The defect scan and inspection tool is heavily utilized in day-to-day operation. Reviewing the data of the defect from the defect scan and inspection tool is heavily relying on human power, but it is not efficient whether used in semiconductor fabrication, PC circuit board industry, or the like. Since viewing the data of the defect by humans is slow and lengthy, only a few percentages of the data of the defect are sent to engineers for reviewing daily. Therefore, potential killing defects are easily ignored.
Moreover, potentially malfunctioning equipment will be reviewed only if the data of the defect is reviewed by the engineer. Otherwise, the malfunctioning equipment is bypassed without defect reviewing. Large yield reduction will eventually occur with a long period of malfunction.
Accordingly, the inventors of the present invention have considered the aforementioned disadvantages and proposed the present invention of reasonable design which is able to effectively improve the disadvantages.